ISTANBUL/BAGHDAD, 20 July 2005 — Interior Minister Prince Naif yesterday sought greater cooperation and coordination among Iraq’s neighbors, saying not enough was being done to prevent growing violence and terrorist attacks in the war-torn country.
Addressing a meeting in Istanbul of interior ministers from countries neighboring Iraq, Prince Naif stressed the importance of exchanging information, monitoring borders and drying up financial sources of terrorists.
He also called upon the international community “to cooperate with us to achieve the objectives of our meeting in order to help the Iraqis and all other people in the region enjoy peace and stability,” the Saudi Press Agency said.
The ministers hammered out a regional security cooperation deal. The agreement was reached in a meeting between ministers from Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Iran, Syria and Turkey, the second of its kind since December.
The ministers also discussed ways of preventing the infiltration of insurgents into Iraq.
In his keynote address, Prince Naif condemned the terrorist attacks in London, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, saying these attacks emphasized the need for greater and real global cooperation to combat the scourge.
Prince Naif stressed that exchanging accusations and holding a particular religion or community responsible for terrorism would not serve the purpose.
“This classification will weaken international efforts to fight terrorism, which grows in an environment of hate and hostility between peoples and cultures and we don’t accept that,” he said. “There will be no gains without sacrifices,” the prince said while talking about the murder of the Egyptian envoy to Baghdad and other similar incidents.
Meanwhile, gunmen shot dead two Sunni members of a committee drafting Iraq’s new constitution and an aide yesterday, striking a blow against the body seen as the best hope for providing a political end to an insurgency.
Sheikh Mujbil Al-Sheikh Isa, Dhamin Hussein Ileywi and Aziz Ibrahim were gunned down as they left a restaurant in Baghdad’s central Karrada district.
Isa and Ileywi were full-fledged members of the 71-strong constitutional committee and Ibrahim was described by political allies as a member of an advisory body helping them. “We send our condolences to their families and to all the people of Iraq,” said Parliament head Hajem Al-Hassani. “Those who carried these crimes out want to spread sectarian divisions.”
The US Embassy in Baghdad said the United States was “confident that the Iraqi people will not allow this cowardly murder to deter them from their goal of a free and democratic government”.
In New York, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned the killings as a criminal act and hoped they would not deter the constitutional committee from completing its important task on time, said UN spokeswoman Marie Okabe.
Salih Al-Mutlaq, spokesman for the Iraqi National Dialogue, a Sunni umbrella group representing the three men, said the government was to blame for failing to keep them safe. Amid Iraq’s continuing violence, there had been some hope the constitutional committee could quickly yield a document the authorities could begin pitching to the public.
Hours before the killings, President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, issued a statement saying he hoped the draft constitution could be ready early — by the end of this month — if Sunni concerns could be quickly addressed.
At one of Baghdad’s busiest hospitals, scores of patients lay abandoned in wards when doctors and nurses went on strike saying they had been abused by Iraqi troops.
The Yarmouk Hospital often receives dozens of dead and wounded a day from attacks.
A three-day rampage of suicide attacks, which Al-Qaeda’s Iraq wing said was an offensive to seize the capital, appeared to have ended after killing more than 150 people.
The strikes began on Friday with 11 suicide car bombs across Baghdad and the highway leading south. On Saturday, 98 people were killed by a fuel truck blast, the second deadliest single guerrilla strike since the conflict began in 2003.
Monday was quieter, but 13 Iraqis were killed yesterday morning when gunmen ambushed a minibus taking workers to a US base.
A report by a London-based group said 25,000 Iraqi civilians had died violently in the first two years of conflict. The government released figures saying more than 8,000 Iraqis died violently in the 10 months leading to May.
— With input from agencies
